<h5>Poster of "Where Is My Friend's Home"</h5>
【Wasabi Set】 is a film appreciation column launched by Wasabi Heap, which selects high-quality films with educational significance for readers in the form of film criticism, excavates the educational connotation in movies, and reveals the life, sociality and philosophical rationality of education.
Mustard Heap February 5 Pastoral Notes
Where Is My Friend's Home, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, was filmed in 1987, 31 years ago.
The film mainly tells the story of the primary school that takes place in the Iranian countryside. The plot is simple, a sentence can be fully expressed, the boy Ahmed accidentally took the wrong homework book of the same table Muhammad, in order to avoid being reprimanded by the teacher the next day, over the mountains and mountains to return.
Although the story is simple, in Abbas's particularly delicate creation of emotion, the whole film is like a poem. The obsession of the little boy Amud makes people see the precious innocent friendship between children, but behind the simple story, people can't help but think.
The students and teachers in the film are non-professional actors from the local village, and when they face the camera, their hesitant eyes and simple timid expressions are just what Abbas wants to achieve - real. Abbas also won the Best Director Award at the 1987 Tehran International Film Festival and the Art Film Award at the 1989 Cannes International Film Festival.
<h3>Part 1 If you don't return your homework to your classmates, the consequences will be very serious</h3>
The film begins in a classroom at school, where the teacher checks his homework and finds that Muhammad has forgotten his homework notebook again and has written it down on paper. When the teacher found out, he tore up the homework and asked continuously, "How many times have you been told by the teacher?" "Why don't you write your homework in your homework book?"
Muhammad lowered his head and cried, explaining that the homework was forgotten at his cousin's house, but the teacher warned that if he did not bring his homework next time, he would be expelled. The teacher emphasizes that this is to help students establish good rules.
<h5>The aggrieved And weeping Muhanmad</h5>
<h5>On the left is Amud and on the right is Muhanmad</h5>
After school that day, Amoud suddenly found himself bringing home his homework notebook from his tablemate Muhammad (because it looked the same), and he was very nervous. He hesitated and whispered to his mother that if he did not return the homework to his classmates, the consequences would be very serious, and he repeated it six or seven times, but his mother still insisted that Amoud write the homework first. After Amud took the book and explained to his mother, his mother still did not change her mind, shouting to Amud, "Your child will make me angry, and if you don't obey me again, I will beat people!" ”
<h5>Amud's mother</h5>
In desperation, Amud could only continue to write his homework, but he still could not stop worrying about his friends. At this time, his mother asked him to go out to buy bread, and Amud looked pitiful and helpless, but secretly decided to sneak out and return the homework, although he only knew which village Muhammad's family was in, but did not know the specific location.
Accompanied by the cheerful and tense melody of the traditional Iranian instrument four-stringed violin Setar, Ahmed gallops on the road to Muhanmad's house. He crossed the streets, climbed the slopes of the "Z" road, and ran through a grove of trees to another village, where he walked around and asked questions, but still no one could tell where his friend's home lived.
<h5>Amud ran on the road to Muhanmad's house</h5>
<h3>Part 2 Sometimes he would forget to give me money, but he never forgot to beat me</h3>
The rare warm blue door in the picture gives Al-Mulder a glimmer of hope, and it is the house of Muhammad's cousin. However, he heard that Muhammad's cousin and his father had recently gone to his village, so he returned all the way back.
<h5>Amud was at the door of his cousin's house in Muhammad</h5>
<h5>Amud was looking for Muhammad</h5>
The same road, the same exotic soundtrack, the camera follows Amud unhurriedly, there is no beautiful scenery along the way, barren land, naked hillsides, lifeless dead trees, everything seems very monotonous.
The only color in the picture is Amoud who trotted all the way, orange shirt, blue pants, leaving home for friends without permission, traveling a long way to find and worry about friends, asking for directions and not understanding, children's innocence and kindness are expressed with poetic images, but it is not as beautiful as the scenery poem, it is slightly bitter and helpless warmth, and it is a wisp of warmth that director Abbas poured into Amud.
After running back to the village, the director inserted a conversation between Grandpa Amud and his neighbors.
Grandpa saw Amud running back from a village and deliberately sent him to fetch non-existent cigarettes to delay his time. He told his neighbor about his father's education, he said: "My father gave me a penny a week, beat me once every two weeks, sometimes he would forget to give me money, but never forgot to beat me, and this is the education that made me an obedient person." ”
<h5>Grandpa Amud</h5>
The neighbor asked, "Did you do nothing wrong and hit you?" Grandpa replied, "Yes, if you don't do anything wrong, find a reason to fight, in order to make me an obedient person." Grandpa praised this unreasonable way of education, of course, he also inherited his father's concept of education, and used scolding education to cultivate an "obedient" person.
As the camera pans, Amuda encounters a man who sells iron doors, and this man is discussing the price of the iron gate with his neighbors. The man tried to tear a piece of paper from Amud's homework book to use, and Amud whispered to him that the homework book was not his, and that if he tore it off, the teacher would be very angry. But the man ignored his pleas and tore off the homework book.
After a while, Amud learned from the adult conversation that the man who snatched the home book was also called Muhanmad, so he guessed that the man was probably a friend's father, so he asked him many times whether he was Mr. Muhanmad, but the man had been talking to others about business and did not pay attention to him. This situation is also very common now, in front of adults, children seem to naturally have no right to speak, it is easy to be ignored, everything has to listen to adults.
Amud asked no less than 10 times, but the man still didn't answer. He rode away on a donkey, with Amud following closely behind, again on a "Z" road, again on a hillside, and once again on this path in search of friends.
<h3>Part 3 It is not a place where man can be called his homeland</h3>
Chasing him to Muhammad's house, Amud saw a little boy coming out of the door, but he was not a friend of his own. Amud asked him if he knew another Muhammad, and the boy said that there were many people in the village named Muhanmud, and it turned out that Muhanmad was a common surname.
As the night grew darker, the little boy told him that another home, Muhammad, was nearby, and he continued to search according to the boy's vague instructions.
After a while, Amud saw an old man, who said that he also knew a child named Muhanmad, so the grandfather led him to find the Muhammad.
Along the way, Grandpa kept telling His story to Amud. He was a doorman, and everyone in the village used the wooden door he made, but then the people in the village gradually changed to iron doors, and no one used wooden doors. The grandfather has a younger brother, but no wife and children, and is a lonely old man.
The old man said to Amud, "My brother lives in the town, why does everyone want to live in the town?" I couldn't like the feeling of going to town at all, it wasn't a place where people could call home. It was a shame that the door I had worked so hard to make was taken to the city for use. My door, ah, to where in the city to go. The last time I went to town, I went around looking for my door, but I couldn't find it, and it felt like my nephew was gone. ”
As he spoke, he walked over to the Muhan modd house of the old people, and Amoud looked forward to it, only to find that it was the Muhan mod house he had just come to, and he was a little disappointed. So Al-Muld decided to go home. But the old man didn't seem to notice the loss on his face, and wanted to take him to see the doors and windows he had made.
One is a child who is worried that his friend will not be able to finish his homework, and the other is a poor and lonely old man, and Amud is anxious to go home, so he walks in front of the grandfather, but from time to time he looks back at the grandfather. Amud continued on his way, and when he came across a dog, he ran back in fright, and the old man stepped forward and told him that the two should go together.
<h3>Part 4 Don't worry, I'll help you with your homework
</h3>
Amud, who had returned home, had not eaten dinner and was somewhat sad. He hurriedly finished his homework and wrote one for Muhammad. Here's a detail where the heel of Amud's socks is punctured.
<h5>Amud was writing his homework</h5>
The next morning, the teacher had to check the homework again, and Muhammad did not have a unified homework book, but wrote the homework in other books. When the teacher said to start checking the homework, he lowered his head nervously, no, it should have been buried all the time. The moment looked very torturous.
Fortunately, Amoud arrived in time, quietly handed the homework book to Muhanmad, and whispered, "Don't worry, I'll help you write your homework." The teacher turned to the page to be checked, turned it over, and signed the word "yes." At the end of the shot, sweeping into Amoud's homework book for Muhammad, sandwiched between a small white flower, the cheerful exotic soundtrack sounds again, and the film comes to an abrupt end.
<h3>Part 5 It is like a poem, simple and simple</h3>
After watching this movie, there is a feeling that the quality of the movie is not complicated and has no fundamental connection. "Where is My Friend's Home" has no metaphors, no political criticism, it is like a poem, simply showing daily life, showing the purest feelings in children's hearts.
Ahmed was constantly searching in a strange village, and "Muhammad" came out of his mouth from time to time, his eyes full of persistence and simplicity, clear to the bottom. Black old cows, cozy hens, steep stone steps and dilapidated and narrow wooden doors, and the weak but kind old men in the doors, Ammoud searched and inquired in the bright and dark alleyways until dark.
In fact, some problems are also exposed in the film, such as the excessive harshness of teachers, the wrong education methods of parents, and the indifferent relationship between family members. The children in the film bear heavy labor, farming, carrying things, taking care of their brothers... Parents keep their children doing their homework while keeping them at work.
Teachers have to repeat the homework in the classroom to write homework in the homework book many times, which also reflects the family's lack of attention to children's education and the neglect of children's hearts. Whether it was Iran 31 years ago or rural China now, what is the difference?